Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Designing Women

Apologies for the lengthy delay in updating my blog -- I was finishing up portrait work for my class, went on a three week road trip, and then I've been catching up since then.

Every year in San Francisco, we have a ginormous Pride Parade. It's an amazing event, in part because its roots in a celebration of political freedom lead to a lot of personal expression in a lot of areas out on the street. I've taken some of my favorite portraits there, and I look forward to it every year.

The challenges in photographing Pride are manifest: Along with the general mob scene, for 3/3 years running the light has been scorching and cloudless once it jumps over the tops of the buildings on Market Street. The solution to all these problems is to show up early, before the parade starts, and just wander around to catch the early morning chaos.

The bad news for me is that I thought taking Caltrain was a good idea. It was thirty minutes late (swarming with parade goers), and they didn't bother to run an early train this year. So, I only had about ten minutes before the parade started -- but that's where I shot this.

Taking photos of mannequins in storefronts is normally a trap for photographers. I don't get a lot out of it, and I'm generally not moved. This scene, though, worked for me in a way that was unexpected -- and it was the first shot from Pride this year that I liked.